Elon Musk Seeks Revenge After Being Ousted from His Own Company
The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has not given up on suing OpenAI. His lawsuit against the former company has officially proceeded to court, scheduled to begin on 28 April 2026. According to Yahoo Finance, the trial is expected to last up to four weeks. A jury will decide whether OpenAI’s founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, lied when claiming the company was maintaining its non-profit structure. As context, Musk was once a key figure in founding OpenAI as a non-profit research institution in 2015. He even donated $38 million (Rp645 billion) as initial funding. However, Musk was ultimately ‘booted out’ of OpenAI in 2018, after failing to convince Altman for Tesla, his automotive company, to acquire the institution. After Musk’s departure, OpenAI continued developing advanced AI tools, eventually booming with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. Musk was unhappy because OpenAI transformed into a for-profit entity, not aligning with its original identity when he provided funding. Musk is demanding compensation of up to $134 billion (Rp2.277 quadrillion) from OpenAI and Microsoft Corp in his lawsuit. Expert witnesses presented by Musk calculated that he is entitled to OpenAI’s ‘ill-gotten’ profits ranging from $79 billion to $134 billion, approximately 2,900 times his initial investment. The judge described this methodology as ‘not very convincing’ but did not reject it for the trial process. Altman, Musk, former OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are scheduled to testify. In his lawsuit, Musk accuses OpenAI of giving false assurances regarding the company’s non-profit mission. ‘There is substantial evidence that OpenAI’s leadership knowingly gave false assurances to Musk about its charitable mission, which they never fulfilled for their own personal gain,’ said Musk’s lead counsel, Marc Toberoff, quoted from CNBC International, in January 2026. OpenAI denies the allegations and has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Musk claims he was manipulated after OpenAI formed a profit-oriented affiliate, including billion-dollar partnerships with Microsoft, and planned to change the company’s structure to profit-oriented. Musk alleges that Altman and the other defendants have unjustly enriched themselves by billions of dollars. Meanwhile, OpenAI calls Musk’s lawsuit unfounded and part of an ongoing pattern of harassment. Microsoft is also a defendant for allegedly aiding OpenAI’s breach of fiduciary duty. For information, OpenAI previously planned to become a profit-oriented company in 2024, but after pressure from former employees and public figures, the non-profit structure retained control. Microsoft has an investment of around $135 billion in OpenAI’s profit unit. Musk also runs the AI company xAI, which competes with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. xAI initially had benefit corporation status, but those social and environmental obligations were removed in 2025 when merged with the social network X.